Heather Gaudio Fine Art presents The Summer Show, an international group exhibition featuring paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by 9 of the gallery’s roster artists Hyun Jung Ahn, Tegan Brozyna Roberts, Fernando Daza, Jessica Drenk, Harry Markusse, Dakyo Oh, Matt Shlian, Nadia Yaron and Thomas Witte.
The show opened on July 27, and will run through Saturday, September 14, 2024.
“The artists featured in this exhibition use diverse materials in singular ways to highlight color, form, and materiality,” said gallery owner, Heather Gaudio, adding, “Working mostly within the mode of abstraction, they articulate signature lexicons through an intuitive, processed-based approach resulting in engaging and visually stimulating artworks.”
The artists hail from different cultural and geographic backgrounds, they share in their explorations of themes around a relationship with memory, personal histories, nature, and geographic locations. Countries represented in this show include the United States, Korea, Spain, Brazil, and the Netherlands.
Heather Gaudio Fine Art relocated from New Canaan to Greenwich last summer and opened in September with a group show featuring all women artists. More than 50% of the gallery’s roster of artists are women and the gallery represents artists from over two dozen countries. The next group show at the gallery will open in November and is curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah. This will be the first time the gallery is working with a guest curator since opening more than a decade ago.
More information is available online at Heather Gaudio Fine Art.
About the artists
Hyun Jung Ahn is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist from Seoul, South Korea. Through her work, she investigates enigmatic abstract forms, which she references as “shapes of mind.” She begins by drawing from her visual diary, which captures feelings, personal connections, and emotional states of being. She then translates these notions into minimalistic drawing, painting, and sculpture. Ahn was selected as the ‘Emerging Young Artist’ at La Mer Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, and was the winner of the Emerging Art Award at Baditto Art, Tuscany, Italy. She has attended residencies including Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, and Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, NY. Ahn Graduated from Duk-Sung Women’s University, Seoul (in 2010 B.F.A and 2013 M.F.A) and received her second M.F.A in painting and drawing from Pratt Institute and currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
A native of Philadelphia, Tegan Brozyna Roberts is an artist who is fascinated by her surroundings. Her collages feature painted pieces of paper suspended in tightened thread, a representation of her mission to find peace and balance in the world. By simplifying colors and shapes that she observes in her everyday life, Brozyna Roberts strives to gain a fuller understanding of her environment. She also draws inspiration from her family’s history in textile, which is represented through the motif of cotton thread in her work. She is currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York.
The works of Seville-born Fernando Daza are brilliant explorations of the interactions between color, light, and texture. His medium of choice is monochromatic paper that he tears by hand and then layers onto canvases of varying shapes and sizes. Many of his pieces are diptychs consisting of two similarly shaped canvases yet highly contrasting colors. Daza received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Seville in 2003 and subsequently participated in a printmaking program at the University of Athens. He has participated in many solo and group shows in cities such as Madrid, Seville, Cádiz, and Lisbon, and his works are included in numerous public and private collections.
Jessica Drenk subverts our notion of functional everyday materials. Her multi-media work draws inspiration from the natural and cultural worlds, using patterns and systems of information found in both. She uses simple materials such as pencils and books to recontextualize them intto free-stadning or wall-mounted sculptures. Other more indutrial materials such as PVC Pipe are carved and assembled to reference something more ephemeral, like waves or ripples created by water.
Harry Markusse is now a successful artist working from his studio in Amsterdam and represented in important collections, such as those of the AkzoNobel Art Foundation and Museum Voorlinden. Yet it remains a fun fact that he earned his first ‘painting tracks’ as a young graffiti artist in the Maasstad, where he grew up.The young painter still likes to be inspired by the repetitive and mathematical character of rhythms, sequences and cadences, as you often encounter with graffiti tags. His formal language may look austere and controlled. Still, his compositions arise spontaneously, are dynamic and suggest an infinite movement, as if they were snapshots of something that could go on indefinitely outside the box. In this way, he manages to play with the time-honored trompe-l’oeil effect of perspective and depth on a flat surface.
Markusse made the three striking wall paintings, Green Lines, Orange Ribbon and Purple Structures, especially for HIM. As a viewer, you will mainly notice clean lines from a distance, but whoever comes closer will also discover traces of the artist’s character: brush strokes, minor imperfections, irregularities and sometimes even fingerprints. Markusse considers these details in his handwriting.
Born in Sāo Paulo, Brazil and raised in New York, Nadia Yaron began her artistic career as a furniture maker. Working with salvaged wood and alabaster or marble, her creative practice expanded to making objects and sculpture, finding a visual language that is evocative of the ephemerality of nature and our relationship with it. Working instinctually, Yaron uses chainsaw, grinders, and hard carving tools, to achieve the desired textures and finishes, always mindful to defer or accentuate the stone and wood’s natural forms and patterns. Her column sculptures can be life-sized, the stacks of different species of wood and types of stone can take on anthropomorphic aspects with a single piercing in the top stone. Other sculptures are capped with cloud shapes, bringing to mind layers in a landscape. Yaron lives and works in the Hudson Valley.
Dakyo Oh majored in Plastic Arts at Paris 1 University Pantheon-Sorbonne in 2016 and completed an MFA in Oriental Painting at Seoul National University Graduate School of Fine Arts in 2021. Her work is based on earth, the source of creation and the source of humanity. Focusing on elements and energies gathered from nature, such as soil and sand, the artist believes that all life and nature begins with soil and tells the story of the birth and mystery of life. Her paintings are a mixture of earth, sand, and glue. They are formed by the solidity of earth dust, embodying natural elements and chance.
Born in 1980 in the United States in Connecticut, Matt Shlian has developed an original language at the crossroads of art and science. Trained in ceramics, notably at Alfred University and Cranbrook, he does not claim any affiliation, considering his work on the fringe of any artistic movement. He quickly became interested in digital printing and paper, which he appreciated the delicacy and immediacy. Matt Shlian tackles the creation of a scientific point of view, leading him to surround himself with researchers from the University of Michigan. Together, they work on a nanoscale to study paper structures. An ideal support in his opinion, to illustrate cell division, the development of solar cells. These scientific observations are a first step. The execution process depends on accurate surgical planning and measurements. However, the most important remains the initial fold. This first action that will cause as a sequence of dominoes a transfer of energy to the following folds. And it is also through arbitrary incidents and as construction progresses that the movement is created, giving birth to fascinating compositions in which force transcends the lightness of paper.
An American artist, Thomas Witte studied sculpture at Rutgers University and then traveled to Argentina, where he learned the stencil technique from graffiti and Street Art creators. Later, he decided to make the stencil the main object of his work, concentrating on the cutting process. Witte reworks old photographs on paper, as well as some more recent ones taken by himself. His process contemplates the projection of the photo on the paper, the drawing of guide lines that will serve as a map, and finally the hand-cutting of the shapes that make up the image. Witte’s works reach an incredible level of detail, managing to reproduce shapes, textures, brightness, lights and shadows, as well as a marked sense of depth, using only cuts and incisions on heavy paper.
Heather Gaudio Fine Art specializes in emerging and established artists, offering painting, works on paper, photography, and sculpture. The gallery provides a full range of art advisory services, from forming and maintaining a collection, to securing secondary market material, to assisting with framing and installation. The focus is on each individual client, selecting art that best serves his or her vision, space, and resources. The six exhibitions offered every year are designed to present important talent and provide artwork appealing to a broad range of interests. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday; 10:30am to 5:30pm; and by appointment.